


The Conspirator's Complex

by shrink



Category: South Park
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrink/pseuds/shrink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to The Conformity Conspiracy. It’s been three years since Dylan left his friends and South Park behind to join Mike’s band and become famous. A trip back home leaves him shocked with what has changed and what has stayed the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the sequel to “The Conformity Conspiracy.” That fic was written before “Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers” so I went with the fandom names for the characters. Because those characters with those names are so cemented in my head I’m going to stick with them for this fic. So Michael=Ethan, Pete=Dylan, and Ferkle=Georgie. If that’s hugely annoying you, then you can definitely copy this into Word and do a Search and Replace…otherwise sorry! Anyway, Mike Makowski is a huge character in this fic and Mike and Michael are too similar to not confuse me in an undertaking like this.

**Author's Note:** This story is the sequel to "The Conformity Conspiracy." That fic was written before "Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers" so I went with the fandom names for the characters. Because those characters with those names are so cemented in my head I'm going to stick with them for this fic. So Michael=Ethan, Pete=Dylan, and Ferkle=Georgie. 

* * *

 _"I turned my back and felt the vacuum of my leaving."  
__-Landscape with Black Coats in Snow,_ Richard Siken

* * *

**Three years later.**

**x.**

The edge of Mike's iPhone poked me in the shoulder for the fifth time and I could make out his whiny voice through my headphones. I closed my eyes tighter and tried to return to the dream where I was in the auditorium of my high school, it was rehearsals for the talent show and I'd forgotten my amp. But Ethan said he'd found it in the pockets of his coat. I didn't believe him and but when I reached my hand inside, the pockets were endlessly deep. I was sure that we could both fit inside and stay there forever.

It wasn't until Mike tugged my earbud out that I opened an eye and was brought back to reality. "We're not possibly there yet," I mumbled before he could say whatever he had intended to. From the lack of kinks in my neck and shoulders, I hadn't been asleep long.

"We're not in LA." Mike looked nervously over his shoulder at the flight attendant. He opened his mouth to continue then closed it again before swiping a piece of hair behind his ear.

I turned towards the window. Over the runway fat snowflakes whizzed past. I stretched my shoulders, "I didn't know we had an adjoining flight," I stood to grab my carry-on from the overhead. It was hard to keep straight whether the days meant we were touching down somewhere or taking off. I was just glad I wasn't the one with the microphone on stage that had to remember the name of the city they were in. "Come on," I yawned, "let's see if Harbucks has inseminated this airport too."

I wrinkled my nose at the businessmen in tailored suits who were already barking orders into their phones as they shoved their way out of first class. "Fucking pricks," I mumbled as Mike trailed behind. No matter how much luxury I was suddenly endowed with, I'd never lost my contempt for people with money.

I'd been glad when Mike told me before we'd boarded that other members of the band had caught another flight. After the lackluster performances of Bloodrayne and Vladimir the record label had assigned us a seasoned bassist and drummer. They were just studio musicians who looked good in skinny jeans and eyeliner. This punched a hole through whatever semblance they'd had of being a "real" band. Mike hadn't exactly been thrilled about having to tell his friends that they were essentially fired. But it didn't make any difference to me. It's not like I'd ever really known the Vamp kids. Anyway, now we had actual musicians playing with us -- making me work harder to match their level of skill. Mike had insisted he liked them both but I could see through his pained smiles when they pointed out he was flat.  Anyway, it didn't matter either way; it was just business in a world I'd been more than accepted into. No one had been rushing to replace me. Just the opposite. The label bombarded me with "gifts" of free guitars, brand new amps, and a big enough paycheck to afford a loft apartment in Brooklyn and anything I wanted to fill it up with.

I still hadn't come to terms with the band name, "1,000 Years of Solitude." It was some trend in the industry of making respected works of literature into commercial emo band names that looked cool screen-printed across t-shirts. I guess Mike's pretty boy looks didn't hurt sales either. He'd grown his hair long enough to form a loose bun on the top of his head -- long pieces of dyed green ends would always come loose and sweep over his face on stage. Before magazine shoots, make-up artists would help him apply fake eyelashes before brushing his skin with a light layer of cover-up before standing back to admire his wide blue eyes and soft features. Sometimes I wondered if the record label encouraged him to keep up this androgynous look, or if was just something that South Park had always held him back from exploring. Make-up artists weren't nearly as impressed by me -- more annoyed at having to cover up pock marks on my forehead before dragging eyeliner under my eye with half as much care as Henrietta used to have. 

"Denver?" I said flatly as I frowned at the familiar murals on the walls. The last time I'd seen any inch of the state had been three years ago when I'd flipped it off from 40,000 feet above the ground. "So we have an adjoining flight?" 

It wasn't a question so much as a wish as this point. I could tell something wasn't right from the way Mike's shoulders were pinched together. 

"No," Mike said simply, walking towards the Harbucks like this ambiguity was a casual thing that I needed to stop questioning.

"Mike, don't choose this moment to practice some ill-timed stoicism." I was too used to tuning out his need to talk my ear off on the tour bus. Anything from the distinctions in green tea blends to how "enthusiastic" the last audience had been were up for debate. Admittedly though, I'd seen less of him lately, finding him in his bunk on the tour bus with a drawing pad propped up on his knees and earbuds tightly in place.

"Look, can I just get a cup of tea?" He said without looking at me. He was staring at the menu above the cashier as if he didn't always order the same thing. 

I waited for some further explanation but he was busy asking the barista to drop one ice cube into the hot water. "If we're not here for an adjoining flight, I'm going to get a ticket home," I said as we stood by the coffee bar for his drink. I waited for a reaction from him but he was either calling my bluff or genuinely indifferent. I couldn't decide which was more obnoxious. 

Maybe I should just really do it and go home. It was strange to think of my apartment in New York as "home"—I was barely ever there. When I was there I had to eat out because it didn't make sense to buy groceries. My apartment overlooked a Chinese restaurant that I walked to almost every night alone. The waitresses knew my order and would seat me in the back corner by the window where I could watch people walking past. Mostly though, I was on the road, at music festivals, or being shuttled to studios to meet producers to work on our next album. Once our third single played during an episode of some shit reality show on MTV our popularity had taken off. The label had been quick to organize a tour, and I'd barely touched the ground since. I got the feeling that they wanted to milk us for everything we are worth before the hype died down. The result was more money in my checking account than I'd ever be able to spend along with complete exhaustion. It was strange to see my face on magazines, hear my music on the radio, and be treated with some degree of importance by everyone from record executives to reporters and our public relations team. 

As I glanced at the signs for baggage claim my neck felt hot with a feeling that had gotten too familiar in the passing years. I turned around and saw two teenage girls with their phones aimed at the back of Mike's head. Until that moment I hadn't really considered the fact that we'd have fans in Colorado. I basically viewed it as a black hole on a map of the United States. That was another thing that had taken some getting used to. The fans who knew all the words to our songs, knew our names, favorite colors, and birthdays -- who stalked us in real life and on social media. I felt like some caricature to them. If Mike was the emotive, artistic, kind one -- I was the mysterious, quiet, brooding one. Sometimes, when I got drunk enough, it was still funny to think about; a bunch of girls dreaming about me. When the only person I dreamed about wouldn't return my calls.

As annoyed as I was by Mike's standoffish behavior, I didn't want to wait for our next flight amid a huddle of fourteen-year-olds with braces and Misfits shirts they'd blindly plucked from the racks of Hot Topic.

"Come on," I mumbled as I pulled on the edge of Mike's jacket as the barista handed him his tea. I tried to brainstorm some place that'd offer more privacy than the food-court type area they currently occupied. Typically we had a least one bodyguard with us on our tours. But no one was expecting us here, or at least I didn't think so.

"What's going on?"

Mike sighed and shrugged away from me, walking over towards an observation window before sitting on one of the empty rows of seats in front of it. 

He took a sip of his tea and cringed when it burnt his tongue. "Mr. Tweak is going to lose his coffee shop," he said.  

"So what?"

Mike continued like I hadn't said anything. "He wrote me a letter a month ago just thanking for me making it popular enough through our YouTube videos that fans from all over Colorado have visited. That's helped pay the bills the last couple months. But I thought we could do better than that, we could play a benefit show and get sustained interest in the cafe-you know? I figured the two of us could do an acoustic set." He took another sip of tea, his eyes trained on a plane taking off on the runway in the distance. "I owe it to him for letting me play there when I was just a nobody teenager, you know? Without him, we wouldn't be where we are today. Anyway, he's been selling tickets for the past month. I thought if I gave you too much time to think about it that you'd just back out."

He was right about that much. Part of me was somewhat impressed he'd been so under-handed -- even if it was in the name of charity. "You know how I feel about going to South Park," I said slowly. I already felt like a dick just wanting to say no.

"But it's not like you have to go home or anything, you can get a hotel room and catch a flight out in a day or so."

"Mike, it's like five fucking days before Christmas, how am I going to book a flight out of here?"

He sighed and leaned back, his long green hair slipping over his face moodily. "Will it really kill you to do this?"

I was taken aback. He was never this serious. His typical light-hearted sarcasm was replaced with a flat depressed tone as he watched another plane slowly backing into position on the runway outside. For the first time since I'd known him, his black wardrobe seemed to fit his demeanor.

"Okay fine," I said, just wanting him to stop looking so dead. "When is it?"

"Tomorrow." He turned his head away from the flash of someone's camera and ran a hand over his face.

"Come on then, let's get our bags and get to a hotel."

**xx.**

I'd been glad when Mr. Tweak had finally stopped thanking us for doing this. I glanced over the set-list that Mike had put together—thankful that it was just the hits.

"Thanks for doing this," Mike said coolly, stirring the honey in his tea. "And you don't have to keep that constant look of dread on your face. It won't even be South Park people here. Just our fans, you know, probably from all over the state."

He was worried that I was thinking about my old friends showing up. But I wasn't. None of them would answer my phone calls, much less pay money for a ticket to see me. After I'd left South Park, Ethan and I would call one another from time to time. It was mostly awkward small talk. But eventually the calls dwindled until we'd stopped speaking altogether. There just wasn't anything to say. Or there was too much to say, I still wasn't sure. The last that I'd heard from any of them had been a drunken phone call from Henrietta where she'd informed me that I was a "poser" who was a "puppet in the "the corporate machine." I'd been left with the impression that I was nothing more than an object of ridicule for the three of them. It's not as though I wasn't aware that I was part of some manufactured pop-emo band. But so what? I wrote good music and it paid all my bills and then some, and-most importantly—it got me out of South Park. And if they couldn't handle that, well fuck them. It's not like I hadn't tried to bring them to the top with me. 

I sipped my coffee and waved to a fan who covered her mouth and muffled a scream. There'd been a line of girls stretching around the block since we'd arrived. Mike agreed to sit down with a reporter from the local newspaper and was currently professing the value of supporting local businesses. We didn't have much set-up since it was an acoustic show, and I rearranged the stool I was given to play on. I was strangely nervous for the doors to open; even though we'd sold out packed arenas, it was different today because it was South Park. I tried not to think of all the familiar buildings looming around me ghosts not needing my acknowledgment. Still standing with the same expressions in their windows. The diner, the high school, Henrietta's house. My own house.

I felt a wave of anxiety pass over me and tried to focus on fans spinning on the high ceiling of the cafe, the weight of my guitar on my knee, the taste of coffee in my mouth. But once we started playing, I felt at ease playing the songs I'd played hundreds of times before. Even if the song lyrics didn't mean anything to me, the music I wrote still conveyed how I felt. The somber chords of my guitar vibrated through my chest as Mike pressed his lips towards the microphone. 

After the concert Mike had insisted on staying around and signing autographs for all the local fans. How he always managed to look so excited and cheerful in his pictures with them was beyond my comprehension. I slipped away to the back alley for a cigarette not anticipating the advanced stalking skills of a bunch of 9th graders. A group of ten of them surrounded me, calling my name like they knew me, telling me how cute I was, and how much they loved me. In the early days stuff like that had made me feel pretty good about myself; to hear anyone compliment me like that—to want take pictures of me. Growing up, my mom hadn't bothered taking my picture—and any evidence of my childhood lived in the family albums at the Biggle's house. But now there was just an emptiness to it. 

After several, surely unflattering shots of me glowering with my head pressed against grinning girls, I managed to dislodge myself. The cafe was still packed to the gills with people -- I guess Mike's plan had worked. Mr. Tweak was blasting our singles on repeat, and I was sure Mike was in there somewhere glad to "give back" or whatever. Typically at shows, my strategy was to drink just enough soften reality but not enough to forget what my fingers were supposed to be doing. It was a balance I'd found the first couple months of touring. After the show I'd duck out into the bus before Mike was even done professing his thanks to the audience in the microphone. It's not that I was ungrateful; I was just indifferent.

Even as I edged down the sidewalk away from the girls, they were looking like they might follow. I didn't exactly know how to explain that just because Mike was charismatic and charming and always knew what to say to everyone didn't mean I was. Just the opposite. I stared down at my boots leaving shallow imprints in the slush on the side-streets that I hadn't walked down in years but had never forgotten the names to. I pulled the hood of my jacket over my hair. It was streaked with cherry red and too distinctive, freshly dyed by some woman in Park Slope and fell artfully over his eyes at an angle I'd achieved fine on my own with a pair of kitchen scissors when I was ten. My trendy jacket wasn't a match for the Colorado winter and I briefly marveled at the fact that I used to go to school in nothing more than a button down shirt on days that were far colder. But it wasn't like I'd been expecting to be here—a fact that washed over me like a cold sweat. This coat would have been perfect in LA.

I tried not to think it was strange when I found myself at the edge of Benny's parking lot. I wished there were cabs or subways or anonymity that the big cities I was used to. But there was only bright white air, a sparsely filled parking lot, and me. I sat on the curb, considering walking back and demanding a ride back to the hotel from Mike. But he'd been so mopey for days now -- and if helping out Mr. Tweak could change that, then I could let him alone for awhile. Those kids had to have bedtimes. And he would want to leave eventually.

As I opened the front door of the diner I half-anticipated that my friends would be sitting inside at their usual table, unchanged. But the only thing unchanged was the diner itself: ceiling fans were spinning over stained tables; half full salt shakers were stuck in rings of coffee. I took a seat on the opposite side of the restaurant and faced away from the door, feeling safety in the move. I hunkered down behind the menu, considering the thought of actually ordering food. Who knew if my friends were still in South Park anyway? It's weird to think of them as my friends -- but I didn't know how else to think of them.

"That's probably the first time I've ever seen you flip through a menu here," Georgie said, leaning against the edge of the booth. He closed the notepad he'd been holding and slipped it back into his apron. He flopped down onto the cushion next to me and reached an arm over my shoulder to pull me into a sort of side-hug. "I thought I might see you—but I wasn't sure—with everything going on at Mr. Tweaks…" He pulled back and smiled broadly at me. "God you look so cool-like you could be on the cover of AP Magazine-well I guess you have been!"

He must have shot up two or three inches since I'd seen him last, and had to be taller me now. He was still thin and boyish looking, with bright blue eyes and too many piercing in his face.

"So you work here?" I asked, because he was rambling and the obvious stupid questions were the only ones working the way to the surface of my thoughts. I'd honestly talked myself out of expecting to see any of them. It was like watching a horror movie and then constantly having to remind yourself in the hours afterwards that nothing was hiding in your bedroom closet. Only here the threat was real.

"Yep," Georgie said and having been reminded of the fact, glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the booths. But there was only a middle-aged woman bent over a huge textbook, oblivious of the world around her. "I'm trying to put some money aside for next year."

"Next year?"

"College," Georgie said slowly, "I'm graduating high school in June."

"That's _right_." I tried to make it sound like I'd remembered, like I thought of Georgie from time to time. And the truth was that I did…but not this Georgie, not taller-than-me Georgie with a job and a savings account.

"It's not so much for me," he continued, tapping his fingers on the edge of the booth, "I'm just going to Denver Community and my parents are paying the tuition. It's Ike. He has a full ride to Princeton. I need a plane ticket fund. You know?" He shook his head and stood up. "Hold on, you want coffee, I'll be right back."

I blinked and watched him disappear into the back. Was it possible that a freshman relationship lasted three homecoming dances in my absence? It did more than put my disastrous attempt at a relationship with Ethan to shame.

"Here you go," he set the mug in front of me. "So," he continued, leaning against the booth across from me. "How long are you in town for?"

"I don't know." I ducked my head down, letting my bangs fall across my face. "Until I can get a flight out. This wasn't exactly something I planned."

He stared at me thoughtfully for a moment. "It's so weird to see you and Mike on TV. The video for your new song…what was it called…?"

"13 Illusions."

"Yeah that one."

"Yeah," I said, sipping his coffee.

He was quiet for a minute.

"Are you going to…see anyone else?"

I wanted to point out that I hadn't exactly stopped by expecting to see him.

"I don't think I'd have time for that."

"Right," Georgie said standing up straighter now as if he was seeing me clearly. "Did…you want to order anything? Sorry I guess I should have asked."

"No, I'm good." I said, feeling the three years of distance between us all at once.

He looked over at the door thoughtfully for a minute. "My shift is almost over, don't worry about the coffee, it's on me." I opened my mouth to protest but he cut me off. "Just do me a favor and stay here for another couple minutes. Ethan is picking me up and I really think you should say hi."

Instinctively I turned my head towards the door and then looked out the window at the parking lot. He was staring at me with a torn frown and I had to remind myself that he was not the child of my divorce. I wished the pit of my stomach wasn't immediately sour and sick from the twos sips of coffee I'd managed since I'd been here. I wanted to tell him that if I was returning the favor of paying for my coffee by staying here to talk to Ethan -- that I'd rather pay for his plane tickets to New Jersey for the next four years. 

"Oh, I don't think that Ethan—"

"Yes he would." Georgie untied his apron and threw it behind the counter. "Don't look so panicked. It's just Ethan"

I watched in slow motion as a beat-up Jetta pulled into the parking lot. I started scooting out of the booth and walking backwards towards the back of the diner. I felt like every cliché stumble and fall that horror movie heroines made when the killer appeared were suddenly all based on fact. And the thought occurred to me that I couldn't stop comparing all of this to a slasher flick. Maybe that was something I should talk to someone about. A therapist. Maybe immediately. I should go back to the hotel and call a hotline. Georgie followed me, threw an arm over my shoulders, and walked me—somewhat forcibly towards the entrance.

"Georgie, really, this is a bad idea. Please, you just go outside and meet him."

"No, he'll come in," he said calmly, a stark opposite of my frantic whispers. "For Dev's lunch."

I thought about making a run for the kitchen. Surely there was door that led to the back of the diner. I'd seen the cooks outside, sitting on milk crates smoking while hunched over their cellphones. I'd already ducked out the back of one business today, what was another?

But his fingers clawed into my shoulder as if reading my mind. "Don't be a dick Dylan, we've  _all_  missed you."

I unconsciously leaned closer to him as the door swung open. Ethan wasn't looking at us. He was trying to get the one-year old in his arms to let go of a handful of his curls. "Can you grab her?" He said to Georgie while he gently tugged at the chubby fist. The little girl looked half-asleep as she rested her head against Ethan's black coat.

Georgie didn't move, maybe out of fear that I would, and when he got no response Ethan glanced up.

His eyebrows disappeared under his bangs. The little girl shifted in his arms.

"Oh," Ethan said, "hey."

"Hey."

"Yeah, Dylan is in town!" Georgie said too enthusiastically to make up for the fact that all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

"I see that," Ethan said, the corners of his lips pointed down

"Anyway he said he could come to my birthday party tomorrow night," Georgie pulled me closer, as if we'd just been reminiscing, as if everything was fine and always had been. 

Through the haze in my head I tried to remember about agreeing to anything at all. When had Georgie grown up and become manipulative? It was unfair that by denying that I had agreed to any such thing would make  _me_  seem like a liar.

Ethan ran his eyes over me, making the me feel ridiculous for walking around in $300 jeans and custom-ordered Doc Martins. 

" _Cool_ ," he said. It felt like a sarcastic appraisal of my entire existence.

"Let me write down the address for you," Georgie said, finally letting go of me. But now I wished he'd come back. The side of me that Georgie had been pressed against now felt vulnerable and cold.

"So," I had to choke the words out, "you have a daughter?"

Ethan walked towards the highchairs stacked next to the register and drug one over to a table. "Not exactly." After he'd positioned the little girl into the highchair she turned around to look at me with wide brown eyes. "Don't you recognize that demanding stare? She's Henrietta's." He paused for a moment that stretched on forever, "and Damiens'."

"Oh," I said. I tried not to be too visibly hurt by the fact that Henrietta had gotten pregnant and had a baby without telling me. Of course, he wasn't looking at me anyway. It was nice to know that some things never change. "So I don't have to come to whatever party Georgie is talking about. I know this is weird. I didn't want to…I just wanted a cup of coffee."

He looked up at me. "I don't doubt that."

I wanted to scream at him that he was the one who told me to go. That he was the one who had broken up with me. The one who hadn't been there. Hadn't cared enough. Hadn't loved enough. But all the energy behind it died in a small sigh. "Okay," I said, "fuck this."

"Here's the address," Georgie reappeared and slipped a torn off sheet of paper into my hand. "Tomorrow at 7. I'm turning 18. So you better be there." He pulled me in for a tight hug. "I missed you dude." I thought of all the hugs I'd already given girls shorter than me today. I wasn't used to my face being buried in someone's shoulder. It just wasn't the right shoulder.

"Yeah, see you then I guess," I said, my eyes falling from Georgie's grin to Ethan's stare to the baby's fat cheeks. When I stepped outside I couldn't have been more grateful for a frozen gust of December that blew the air of the diner off of me.

I could feel them watching me from the windows inside, talking about me, analyzing how I'd just acted. It was hard to walk in a straight line with the knowledge. When I was finally was far enough away to turn a corner I felt a curtain fall across my back. Somewhere ahead was Mike. I'd demand that he drive me back to the hotel and throw money behind any flight that could get me out of this time zone.

When I made it back to Mr. Tweak's the doors were locked and I waited for one of the baristas to let me in. Mr. Tweak and Mike were sitting on the stools by the counter having a discussion that I was sure I didn't want to be a part of.

"Hey," I said, waiting for Mike to look up. "Can you give me a ride back to the hotel?"

"Yeah, are you okay?" He asked as he grabbed his coat.

"Fine," I said through gritted teeth.

After standing around another fifteen minutes to be thanked by Mr. Tweak we were off, sparing a wave to some die-hard fans who would probably catch pneumonia from sitting on the frozen cement so long.

"So it happened," I said while they were stopped at a red light, "I ran into my old friends."

"Well that's good." Mike said either because he was only half-listening or was as naïve as I had always assumed.

"No it's wasn't, it was horrible and awkward."

"Well now that part is over, you can get to the good part where you talk about what you've been up to."

"I don't think that's the way things work in real life."

"Why can't they," Mike said before shooting me a knowing look. "Because you won't let them."

We were silent for awhile on the highway and I considered pulling out a cigarette just to piss him off.

"Georgie invited me to his birthday party."

"You should go. Because that's the stuff we have to do to stay alive in this world. You know?"

I couldn't stand another minute of his sanctimonious bullshit. "What's _going on_  with you?"

There was silence for a few minutes as we sat in traffic. I watched his fingers tap soundlessly against the steering wheel.

"It's been good to see my parents," he said softly. "But you know that saying-'you can never go home again'-well it's really true."

He parked outside the entrance of the hotel. I got out of the car, lit a cigarette, and stared at the splitting ends of his hair. "That's good. Because some of us don't want to." I half-regretted sounding so cold. But it wasn't like Mike hadn't seen the bruises.

"Not everyone hates their family Dylan," he said before looking down at his hands. "Sorry, I don't mean to sound like..."

"It's fine." It was something that I tried not to think of, so I really just wanted him to shut up.

"I can pick you up tomorrow for the party," Mike said, "if you want."

"Fine," I said, mostly because I just wanted him to leave.

When he did, I crushed my cigarette in the street where the tires of his car had been. The hotel stood behind me and I turned to walked towards it wondering how I'd ever fall asleep tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

_We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it._

_-Jonathan Safran Foer_

* * *

**x.**

 

"I'm surprised by you Dylan. I thought you'd be on a plane by now." Mike said as he tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. "Cash out your bank account and trade it for a ticket with someone at the airport…or something." We'd stopped by Wallmart before coming here. I hadn't known what to get Georgie, and hoped the iTunes gift card in my hand would be okay.

I grimaced a bit. Had I really become predictable to Mike Makowski? No, obviously not. I wasn't on a plane. I was sitting in a car outside the address Georgie had scrawled on a sheet of paper for me.

"Well I'm surprised by the fact that we're both in South Park at all. So I guess this is just one big special memory for the both of us." I snapped.

"Maybe is it," Mike said tersely, not watching me getting out of the car. I was tired of Mike's judgment filtering this whole experience for me. Making me think it was supposed to mean anything.

I had spent night considering all the ways that Ethan had always expected so little of me. I'd stared at the white walls of the hotel, thinking about covering them in newspaper clippings then drawing symbols over top of them with Sharpie markers. The way I'd watched obsessed detectives trace serial killers in movies sometimes. Maybe then I could make out a pattern or come to some sort of conclusion as to how exactly I'd become such a big fucking disappointment to the only person whose opinion ever mattered to me. 

At least I could do this one thing that Ethan didn't expect of me; I could show up at this party. I probably would have gone anyway.

I walked towards the brick townhouse with no identifying features outside. I wondered if Georgie's family had moved here after I'd left or if maybe this was just one of his friend's houses. It made me feel uneasy not knowing which.

There weren't many cars parked on the street. Georgie answered the door as soon as I knocked, giving me the impression that he'd been watched through a window.

It was embarrassing enough being driven around by Mike as if he was my soccer mom. But it wasn't like I'd needed to drive my own car in the three years I'd been away. There had been planes and rented cars with drivers and tour buses. I wished I could loudly point that out to everyone who had just heard the loud engine of Mike's clunker drive away.

There were a surprising amount of 18-year-olds packed into the small living room. And every one of them turned their heads to stare at me. It was a hard room to read and I gripped the envelope too tightly before pushing it towards Georgie. "Happy birthday," I mumbled through what I hoped looked like a smile.

"Thanks dude," Georgie said, motioning for me to have a seat among his friends. Ike offered him a shy wave before slinking an arm around Georgie. "We're all just filling up on pizza, you can grab a slice."

I walked over to the dining room table and inspected the cardboard boxes until I found plain cheese. I imagined this whole party had been arranged by Ike. Parties with pizza, friends, and cake weren't really par for the course when your parents were societal fuck-ups who still found time to complain about how you dressed through the small pin-hole of original thought in their brains. Most of the teenagers were gathered around the TV screen yelling profanities at one another as they took turns on the PS4 controllers. I grabbed one of the cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon from the fridge and tried to remember the special feeling of getting away with something when I used to drink underage. That'd gone away pretty quickly after touring with 40 year-old record executives and tour managers who'd buy us whatever the hell we asked for. Sometimes without asking for it…they did have an image the record company wanted them to maintain.

"So you both live here?" I said, sitting on a chair next to a table covered in poorly gift-wrapped presents that were mostly from Ike.

Ike laughed and raised an eyebrow, "not me," he said quickly.

"Well, this is Henrietta's place..." Georgie said cryptically, "technically, her parents pay the rent and stuff."

I felt a weird sensation run through me and fought the urge to glance over my shoulder. There was no way Henrietta was here. I'd have seen her…heard her.

"Mostly it's just me, Ethan, and Dev."

"The baby?" I asked flatly.

This was all beginning to paint a picture of a fairly fucked-up scenario. I was left with the dissonant feeling of wanting to know everything all at once and wanting to leave the house entirely and never hear another word about it.

"Yeah," Georgie said casually, drawing his thumb over pursed lips. "But listen, everyone is really excited to hear about how you played at Warped Tour last summer, do you think you'd be up for answering a few questions?" he asked, already standing and leading me back into the living room.

"Of course," I said, wanting to do just about anything else in the world. But I followed Georgie to a sofa by the TV. One of the guys sitting on the floor passed me another beer before taking a picture of me covertly with his phone. I had to resist what had become a natural reflex of holding my hand over my face as I turned my face away. I felt uneasy as I settled onto the edge of the sofa and prepared myself for my onslaught questions. Luckily they were all flattering questions like, had I ever met so-and-so, could I get them tickets to some upcoming show, could I give them free backstage tickets to see some other band. They all kept talking over one another, then stopping, to attentively listen to my one-sentence answers, before battling again to get their questions asked.

At one point Ethan walked into the kitchen, heated up a bottle and leaned against the counter chewing a cold piece of pizza. He was wearing his old Cure shirt which still hung loosely over his chest. He looked tired. I wondered if the party was keeping him or the baby awake when they'd normally be sleeping. I tried not to care, especially when he disappeared down the hallway again without so much as a glance in my direction.

By the time Georgie had pulled Ike into his lap and several of the teenagers had decided to take off, I was considering calling Mike for a ride back to the hotel. But the impulse to understand what had actually gone on in my absence was too strong. I stood up and walked down the hallway to where I assumed Ethan must be. Maybe we could talk and catch up like Mike had suggested. Maybe I was just cynical. After all, Ethan had been the one who told me to go and make something of myself. Hadn't I done that? Maybe he would have a slew of complimentary questions to ask me as well. Maybe everything really wasn't as awkward and terrible as I'd built it up in my head.

The first door I pushed opened revealed a cluttered bed that I recognized from Henrietta's parents house. After looking around more I realized that it was basically a recreation of her bedroom, but with everything smashed together to fit in the tinier space. Her vanity was touching the one side of her bed. Make-up and clothes were everywhere, forming their own level of the floor. A baggie with crumbs of weed lay across a McDonald's bag on the dresser and black nail polish was turned on its side, leaking somewhat onto the paper as well.

"What do you want?" Ethan said from behind me. I jerked back away from him, almost tripping over a spiky ballet flat.

"Christ," I said, letting out as breath. 

Ethan shrugged. "Were you looking for the  _front_  door?"

I understood the out that Ethan was giving me and didn't give a damn. "I was looking for you."

"Okay. Here I am."

I had forgotten Ethan's special way of making anyone feel ridiculous for anything at anytime. But what Ethan didn't realize was that I wasn't some 17-year-old kid anymore. I'd been to three continents since they'd last looked at one another. I'd been to god knows how many cities and stood in front of audiences that swelled to five times the population of South Park.

"Why can't we talk—"

"We _are_ talking—"

I ran a hand through my bangs. "Like Georgie and I can?"

"You know why."

Ethan leaned against the frame of Henrietta's room and stared up at the ceiling like maybe someone would throw him a rope ladder and he could climb onto the roof.

"Ethan please."

He jerked his head down and for a second I thought that I was actually getting through to him. But then I realized that he was only listening to the baby crying down the hall. 

"Where  _is_  Henrietta?" I asked as I followed him into a another room further down the hall. It was her baby.

He ignored me, choosing instead to lift the baby out of the crib. She clung her little fists around his neck, entranced by the dangling hoop through his ear. 

"You need to go to sleep Devy," he mumbled as he rocked her in his arms. Her wide eyes blinked and focused in on me. I knew how she felt; safe and warm in Ethan's arms. It wasn't fair that I should be reduced to being jealous of a one-year-old.

"Where's Henrietta," I asked again, noticing all at once that the room the baby crib was in also served at Ethan's. There was a futon bed against one wall and unopened boxes of records labeled methodically in Ethan's neat handwriting. A turntable was sitting on the floor by the window next to a stack of notebooks in a milk-crate.

"Not here."

"I don't understand what's going on..."

"No one is asking you to."

I decided to try again. I don't know why it was so important to me that he stopped looking at me with so much indifference, but it was. "I just hope that you're happy—you know?"

"Okay, thanks for that. You can go back to New York now and feel good about yourself." I watched him place the now sleeping infant back into the crib. 

He stood between me and the crib, his arms crossed over his chest—a stereotypical image of someone on the defensive. It was hard not to feel a pang of regret in my chest when as I stared at the bags under Ethan's eyes and the way his shoulders hunched together. I didn't mean to upset him. I didn't even know what I was doing here. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should just go.

I turned and walked towards the hall when I locked eyes with Henrietta.

"Well look what the wind blew into my house," she said loudly. Her lips a solid line of purple lipstick. She was standing in the hallway with a cigarette lit and hanging from its holder. The dress I was used to seeing her in was replaced in an oversized black Rammstein t-shirt and leggings.

"Oh hey Henrietta, nice to see you too," I said sarcastically. 

"Why are you here?" Ashes fell from her cigarette onto the carpet. 

"Georgie invited me here for his party." I mumbled, looking searching over her shoulder for Georgie, but only succeeding in making eye contact with Damian chugging a beer at the end of the hallway. He eyed me up and down before laughing under his breath.

"It's not Georgie's house, it's mine." I watched the way her shoulders pinched together for a second and her fingers tapped frantically against the cigarette holder.

"Whatever, I'm leaving anyway." I had a home where no one talked to me, where the only person who ever looked tired or thin was my reflection. I should go back there anyway. "I get it; you all want to be dicks to me."

"Yeah that's right," Henrietta said, rolling her eyes, "because I'm the one that abandoned you to sell out like some  _whore_  who needed his fix."

"I don't know," I looked pointedly over at Damian and back at Henrietta, "that description seems  _pretty_  accurate."

"Get out of my house you fucking fag," Henrietta screamed, but she was blocking the doorway. I grabbed her arm to make her move but when I did she flinched and shoved me backwards—"Don't fucking touch me!"

I stumbled over my feet before cracking my head against the door of Ethan's room.

"Jesus Christ!" Ethan yelled, his hand clamping down on my shoulder and in a whirl of color and motion he had shut and locked the bedroom door. I held the back of my head while I blinked away the inky splotches. On the other side of the door Henrietta was bitching loudly and banging on the wood. The baby wailed from the crib, making my lightheaded from the impact hard to keep at bay.

"I'm fine," I said tersely, batting Ethan's hands away as I leaned against the wall. Barely back in South Park 24-hours and someone couldn't handle the fact that I wasn't bruised and bleeding. I tried to tell myself that this wasn't like before. I really  _was_  fine. No one was trying to hurt me. It was an accident. 

Ethan's hand was on my arm again, clutching lightly over the stupid jacket I'd bought at a boutique in London on our UK tour last fall. It had too many zippers and pockets that weren't really pockets and I felt stupid for wearing it and wondered if he thought it was stupid too. He looked like he was going to say something but Henrietta's kick to the door made him draw his hand away.

"I'll be back," he said either to the baby or to me. 

I watched him open the door halfway and slide out of the room. I tried to make out the words he was shouting over Henrietta through the baby's shrieks. Something about the baby I thought. I heard Damian join in and then Georgie. But mostly I didn't want to think about that anymore; about hallways or walls or bedroom floors and bleeding heads. I just wanted to make the baby stop crying. I stood over the crib looked down at her red wrinkled face. Her eyes were round and brown. She really did look like Henrietta. I wanted to explain to her that everything she just witnessed had just been a series of unfortunate events. Just like the rest of my life.

I sucked in too much air and choked a bit before I really started to cry. And the more I cried, the less the baby seemed to want to. She was staring at me with tears still stuck to her chin as I leaned on the crib wanting very desperately to calm down.  I didn't even know why I was crying. I wasn't upset—not really. In fact, in the three years that I'd been out of South Park there hadn't been a need to cry. Everything had been a blur of soundchecks and paychecks, of stages and hotels, faceless fans and nameless reporters. I'd once read a book that said how nice it was to feel nothing and still get full credit for being alive. But right now it felt like some sort of emotional debt collector was at the door for all that time that nothing mattered.

All I could hear now was my childhood friends screaming at one another. I wondered if I could explain to the baby that they're been a time when we would have all done anything for each other. When we were all one another had. "I'm okay," I said to her because she was looking at me so intently. "We all are."

Things were quieting down in the hall and we both heard the front door slam, shaking the thin walls of the room. I drew a long breath and wiped my face hastily on the sleeve of the jacket that I suddenly hated. The baby was tugging on one of the zippers hanging off of it through the bars of the crib.

The bedroom door clicked open again and Ethan was poised to lift the baby out of the crib but paused at the unexpected silence of the room. I could feel him staring at my back and I knew I had to say something to assure him that I hadn't smothered the baby with a pillow or something.

"She's fine," I said with my back still hunched over the crib. He walked to the end of the crib and looked down at us both.

"Is your head okay?" Ethan sounded unsure, like maybe I had been hurt worse than it'd appeared.

Of course, if I was visually upset it must be because a physical injury was forcing the reaction. Ethan had stopped acknowledging that I had any feelings at all after he'd accused me of fucking Mike for cash three years ago. He probably thought I still was.

"Yeah, it just caught me off guard more than anything else." It was hard to sound convincing while still sort of crying and I tried really hard to stop but it just resulted in me taking shuddering breaths. My head probably hadn't been 'okay' in awhile, but that wasn't the type of answer he was looking for.

"Dylan," Ethan said, his fingers tracing over the edge of the crib to touch my hand. "Come sit down on my bed with me."

I nodded and wondered if he was going to keep his hand there, going to actually hold my hand. But slid his fingers up to pull the cuff of my sleeve and led me to the bed.

We sat on the futon and I wiped my face again more angrily than before. I focused on the last three years—who I was now—everything that had happened. Everything I'd gained. It helped in a way.

"Look," Ethan began, "I'm sorry about before. It really is good to see you...in a way."

I forced a laugh. "Great."

"I mean, it was just…" he took a breath and tried again. "After you stopped calling—I just thought the only place I'd see your face again was on the covers of albums I stocked in the store. That's just the truth. So if I was unresponsive, well." Ethan brushed his long waves of curls behind his ears. "I just really wasn't expecting this."

"Yeah—it's not like I planned on this happening. We did this show here for Mr. Tweak and then I ran into Georgie—I mean—I'm sorry, okay?" I didn't know what I was really apologizing for. Being there, I guess.

"It's okay, really," he said squeezing my shoulder for a brief moment. He was smiling at me with a reassuring expression and I couldn't help but offer him a half-smile in return. Was there one person on this whole hellscape of a planet who ever really cared whether I was sad or happy, and had it only ever been Ethan?

He turned away from me, our faces too close together when we were sitting this close, so soon after so long. He cleared his throat. "Henri gets like that sometimes." He said. "Ever since she's been back with Damien she hasn't been herself. Don't take it to heart, okay?" I watched his long leg bobbing up and down against the floor. There was a general feeling that everything was much heavier than he wanted me to catch onto. But it was almost too late.

"She looked different," I said slowly, thinking back to the heavy bags under her eyes and the grey tint to her skin.

"I think she's still getting over the birth," Ethan interjected, redirecting my attention to the sleeping infant. "Anyway, we're all doing fine here, really. I'm staying here to help her with Dev.  And Georgie's over all the time too."

I tried to imagine the sort of perfect picture he was painting for me but so many things didn't add up. I didn't want to pressure him though—it wasn't my place anyway.

"That's great." I was staring at a stack of unopened mail on a desk in the corner with a pack of diapers on the desk chair with a collared shirt strewn on top of them. 

"Let's get a coffee tomorrow morning, okay?" he said. It was less of an invitation to see me again and more of a way to get me to leave. 

I could tell that I had to go—that I had already seen more than he wanted me to.

"Sure," I said. 

He walked me down the hallway towards the front door. There was no sign of Henrietta or Damien. Georgie and Ike were staring at the TV -- both with cans of beers in their fists. Neither of them said anything to me as I left. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:**  I know this chapter has been a long time coming. I hope people are still interested this story, I think I really deserve to give these characters a proper ending! This chapter was completely inspired by the song "Pink Rabbits" by the National.

* * *

" _I'm so surprised you want to dance me with now. I was just getting used to living life without you around."_

-Pink Rabbits, the National

* * *

**x.**

The pattern of knocking on my hotel door was so familiar, for a moment I thought we were back on the tour. I threw my legs off the bed and flicked on the lamp. The alarm clock beamed 6:32 and I was suddenly more annoyed. The headache I'd fallen asleep with hadn't subsided in the night, and I wondered if it was from hitting the wall or from everything that had happened afterwards.

"What?" I said through a yawn, not really looking at Mike as he pushed past me into my room. I wasn't really used to seeing him without eyeliner coating his eyes. He looked like a photocopy of himself; too tired and too old. I could barely hold eye contact. It was easier to look down at the creases in my sheets where I'd just been laying.

"We need to talk," he said, pacing over to the window and opening the blinds. The sun was peaking up over the mountains in the distance and I had the nostalgic inclination to get ready for the school bus.

"If this is about lying to me about coming here—it's not a big deal. I mean, maybe it was a good thing—I don't know." It was hard to organize my thoughts. The buttons on Mike's coat were gold and reflecting sunlight across the room to me.

"It's not that," Mike said. His hair looked tangled and matted. Where had he been last night-or rather,  _all_  night? I almost didn't want to know what he was here to tell me. He'd been the person I'd been the closest with these past few years but not close enough to confide in one another. "Listen, let's get out of here. I don't want to be in another hotel room right now. Let's grab a coffee."

"Can you give me 15 minutes?" I was in desperate need of a hot shower. He nodded and walked back over to the window and dug his phone from his pocket as I disappeared into the bathroom.

When we got to the cafe I was glad to see that Georgie wasn't working. A tired waitress poured me a cup of coffee and slid a couple packets of honey towards Mike for his tea.

"So what's going on?" I asked, when it became clear that he wasn't going to initiate the conversation. He seemed fidgety and I watched him try and peel the lid off one of the plastic containers.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," he said-dropping the honey to the table unopened, "and driving around." He looked out in the parking lot at his teenage car with an unreadable expression. Back in New York he had a brand new Mini Cooper that he'd been so excited about buying two years ago. We all used to joke with him about how much he loved it-not letting anyone have food in it-naming it something I couldn't remember now. "And I think I need a break from this."

"What do you mean?"

He seemed annoyed that I didn't instantly understand everything that he'd been going through.

"Things have been shit since Lynn was forced out of the band," he said. It always took me a second to realize that he was talking about Bloodrayne. Middle school nicknames die hard I guess.

"Well, the new guys have a different sound—I'll admit that, but I think we're all working well together." It was surprising to hear that he had problem with them, he'd never said a word about it to me before.

"No, Dylan you don't understand."

"Okay explain it to me."

"Lynn and I—we're in love."

"Since when?" As far as I knew, everyone had parted on pretty shitty terms after the label stepped in to repopulate the band with its own vision. That couldn't exactly be conducive for a relationship.

"Since always—or I don't know—it's not important. We fell out for a while there with everything that happened, but things are better now—and I want them to stay that way. I don't want to be away from her anymore."

I suddenly was struck by the realization that maybe this trip wasn't really about saving Mr. Tweak's café. After all, Bloodrayne was back in South Park now—probably home from college for Christmas break. His distance and change in personality over the last few months suddenly made sense. They're been so many nights on the past tour where he'd seclude himself in the backs of hotel cafes with his laptop or slip out of the hotels entirely for long walks. Looking back on it now, it made sense that he'd been trying to stay in touch with Bloodrayne.

"So bring her along on tour."

"It's not that easy. The label won't allow me to be seen dating anyone. I need to be seen as 'available' to the fanbase."

"So you're just going to throw away everything we've worked for?" But there wasn't any bite to my words. Not with Mike sitting there looking so defeated. It was obvious that he'd already made up his mind. What was the point? This wasn't a discussion, so why make it into a fight?

He shrugged and I could see tears swelling in his eyes. "I think so," he mumbled.

"Aw, hey man—it's cool. It really is," I said, trying my best to let him know that I understood. I mean, had any of this really made either of us happy? "We can take a break or just fuck the whole thing? Okay, I just want you to get back to your annoyingly perky self. I want you and Bloodrayne to have a queen sized-coffin and all the stuff vamp kids dream about."

He shot me a hesitant look.

"I really mean it. Mike you've been there for me these last couple years—and if that's what you want to do, then don't let me stop you. At least one of us should be happy."

"You deserve to be happy too Dylan," Mike said through a laugh, as he blinked away tears that hadn't fallen.

I looked down at my coffee and wondered if that were true. After all, didn't I always love Ethan all this time? And yet I wasn't the one sitting here, my eyes full of tears, demanding to be let out of the contract for the sake of  _our_ happiness. Maybe things would be different if I thought for a second that Ethan could still love me.

"Well look, I don't mean to leave so soon but Lynn is home waiting—and I want to tell her in-person how well you took all of this."

"I understand," I said, glancing down at my phone. I was supposed to be meeting Ethan here any second anyway.

"I know we don't usually—but—come here," Mike said, standing up and pulling me into a hug.

"You've been a great friend to me," Mike said as he let me go. He shot me smile and I could tell that all the weight he'd been carrying around on his shoulders these last couple months was finally gone.

"The band's all here," Ethan said, standing by the table next to us. He was the most put together that I'd seen since being back in town. He was wearing black jeans with a striped collared shirt and a long black cardigan. A maroon scarf hung around his neck, and I mostly stared at the loose loops it made around his pale neck.

"Not for long," Mike said, shooting me a meaningful look-I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. "I'm just leaving—and Dylan—thank you."

I offered him a weak smile as felt my way back into the booth. Ethan slid in across from me. But I was shell-shocked—and it felt like I was looking through the wrong end of binoculars at Mike's back at he walked out the diner door.

"Sorry he—um—needed to talk," I managed to get out.

The band was over. Years ago, Mike had decided I should be in the band. And now he'd decided that the band was done. The ride was over. Get out, get off, right back where he'd found me. For a moment I expected time to rewind. To spit me back out here three years ago; a lost, abused teenager, who probably wasn't going to pass senior year.

Would it have been for the best to stay here all along? What was any of this for—money? My nails were digging into my palm as I watched Mike back out of the parking lot. I wanted to grab onto the end of his bumper with my fingernails.

Ethan was saying my name and I blinked at him. Luckily the waitress had come back over to refill my coffee and take our order before he could question the fact that I was so dazed. I had to stop thinking about it. I couldn't right now. I wiped a hand across my face to try and clear all my thoughts away. Ethan was here—for some reason—after all this time, Ethan wanted to sit across from a diner table with me and listen to what I had to say. And after all this time, all I wanted was for him to tell me that he'd never stopped loving me. That I couldn't disappoint him. That the music that I put out impressed him in some way-that he still wished it could be us.

"Is everything okay?" Ethan asked, his brown eyes watching me with concern.

"Yeah." I forced a smile. "Yeah, it's just—I'm just not awake yet."

Ethan looked unconvinced but didn't say anything else about it.

"So what have you been up to?" I asked. It was a general question that anyone would ask.

"Working mostly," Ethan said. "The owners of the record shop opened a shop closer to town—so I manage it. It's just an easier commute-now with Dev and everything. Other than that, I mostly stick close to home to help out with Dev."

I nodded as if our experiences the past three years were any way comparable—they just weren't. "Are you still writing?"

Ethan took a sip of his coffee and nodded. "I try to. A lot of times I get ideas while driving to work and forget to write them down—you know? I'll try and remember the general phrasing or the idea before I fall asleep—but most of the time it's just gone."

"I miss your lyrics," I said, feeling a general sadness about how the day-to-day demands had buried the Ethan's creative talent. "They always inspired how I wrote my songs."

Ethan shot me a half smile. "Your music always inspired me to write lyrics."

The waitress came back with our food. I stared down at the side dish of hash browns I'd ordered like the familiar burnt edges could offer me any clue as to how to carry this conversation.

Luckily I didn't have to. "Why don't you tell me about your life—I mean since I've seen you last you've graced magazine covers and have your own league of groupies. Tell me what that's like," Ethan said.

I unconsciously glanced over my shoulder as if a cluster of fawning girls might appear. "Oh, you know—it's a job. I've gotten to see a lot of different places. And meet a lot of cool people. Most of those groupies are chasing after Mike." I wondered how Bloodrayne felt about Mike's groupies.

"Really? Your face was splashed on the news last night after your show at Tweaks—it looked like you were being mobbed by a group of about twenty eighth graders."

"Yeah." I took a bite of my toast. Was he jealous?

"Does that make things weird between you and Mike?" Ethan asked, a calculated look on his face.

I looked Ethan in the eye, "Mike and I are only friends. And we only ever have been."

Ethan raised an eyebrow and tried to look nonchalant. "Okay—I had just assumed something would have happened."

And maybe it was the confidence of selling out stadiums that made me want to say exactly what I felt. But there wasn't really a point in playing games anymore. "Look, I don't know if you want me to tell you this but—Ethan, you're the only person I've ever been with."

Ethan pursed his lips in a thin line and looked down at his hands. His eyelashes were dark against his cheeks and no matter how many people I've met, and no matter how many places I've been to—nothing was more beautiful. He glanced back up at me and I looked away. "So is that all you were back here for? The benefit concert?"

"Well, I thought so—but seeing you has been a pretty amazing fringe benefit."

Ethan's fingers slid over mine before he settled on tracing over stitching in the cuff of my jacket. The warmth of his touch spread up my arm and I let out a breath of air I hadn't realized I'd been holding when he finally pulled his hand away again.

"Yeah," Ethan said. "It's just been so long."

"So," I said, desperately wanting to keep the conversation moving in a positive direction. "Do you sell my album at your store?"

Ethan raised an eyebrow and leaned back in the booth, "I've sold one or two copies."

"I haven' t seen the new store yet—I should inspect it to make sure that it has a place of prominence."

Ethan laughed and nodded. "Come on, I'll take you there."

I grabbed my jacket and threw a couple fives on the table before following him out to his car. I slid into the passenger seat like I'd done a hundred times in the past. "You got a new iPod—" I said. But Ethan was leaning towards me, and I immediately dropped any pretense of wanting to go anywhere but to his bedroom. Our lips met and my mind went blank. All I wanted was to feel Ethan against every inch of me. He tasted the same as he always had—the way I'd never forgotten—the way I tried to remember in cities that were time zones away. We kissed until we had to pull apart for air—and immediately dove back into the kiss—his hands in my hair, and my hands gripping his sides, wishing the damn center console would fuck off.

"Okay, okay," he said, glancing at the diner, "let's get out of here."

I could barely keep my hands off of him on the drive back to his place-or rather, Henrietta's place—and we stumbled while making-out down the hallway and into his bedroom. He pressed me against the wall of his room, his hips grinding into me, his palms flat on the wall behind my ears as he leaned down to suck on my neck. "I need you," he mumbled as I closed my eyes.

**xx.**

I woke up alone in an unfamiliar bed-which wasn't really an unfamiliar feeling with all the touring I'd done. Only this time I could hear Ethan's voice on the other side of the door, pausing every couple words. I wondered whose phone call would have compelled him to get out of bed. I turned my face back into his pillow and enjoyed the smell of our sweat together. I pushed myself up to make sure I was reading his alarm clock: it was already four. I laid back. It was hard to believe that we'd actually slept that long. We'd gotten up to eat lunch sometime after two and then passed out again in one another's arms again. I hadn't felt like I'd slept that deeply in years.

I heard him sigh through the door. "That's bullshit and you know it Henrietta—" he said. "Okay, okay fine."

He pulled open the door and laid his phone on the dresser. He was only wearing his black jeans but I still felt too under-dressed now. I reached for my t-shirt on the floor.

"You don't have to get up," he said, laying back on the bed. He was staring at the ceiling as I pulled my clothes on anyway.

"What's going on?" I asked, looking down at him. He reached up and pushed my bangs behind my ear, his gaze softened.

"Nothing—Henrietta is having her mom drop off Dev and I need to go to work tonight and Georgie doesn't get off of work until later."

"Oh," I said, not because I didn't have anything more to say on the matter—but just because I wasn't sure if I was welcome to.

He glanced over at me with a frown. "Sorry, let's not talk about this right now," he ran his hand lightly behind my head and drew me down for a kiss. "In fact-let's not talk at all." I slid back down onto the bed so we were pressed together again. There were so many things that I was trying really hard not to think about in order to enjoy this moment. It felt so comforting to be by his side, his long fingers trailing up and down the notches in my spine, my lips automatically kissing his shoulder, our hearts beating next to each other after being so far apart for so long. It was hypnotic in way to push everything from my mind but the sound of Ethan's breathe.

"I don't know if this was the best way to do this," he mumbled. "But I needed you so bad."

"I know," I said, wondering how to find the words to frame the heavy feeling of loss that surfaced when I was without him. "I've missed this too."

"It's so strange-all those months of only seeing your face on promotional posters hanging in the store or magazine covers. And now you're here."

"I hate that you felt like you couldn't see me if you had told me you wanted to."

"How was I supposed to feel? What was your last tour date-Osaka? I mean, come on Dylan. These days I'm lucky to make a trip to Denver and you don't exactly have an open schedule. Not like that was even the biggest barrier anyway."

I opened my mouth but I wasn't sure what to tell him. Part of me was surprised to hear he was following anything the band did. But how do you explain to someone else the hollowness you feel when you pull the sheets over your head at night and wonder for a fleeting moment if there's enough air getting through them for you to breath for the next six hours.

"Listen, I think I was right before-we are at our best when we're not talking. You know? We're best like this-" and he pinned my hands over my head with one hand and kissed me tightly on the lips.

My eyes stared up at his closed eyelids as I let him kiss me, and I resisted the urge to turn my face away. It was shocking, in a way, to hear Ethan talk to me like that. But I didn't know what to do but lay there and let him.

"I have to get ready to go and figure out what I'm going to do about Dev," he said, glancing back the clock.

I wanted to tell him that I'd pay whatever month's wages he'd earn at the record store to stay here with me for five more minutes-to  _talk_  to me, to tell me how he feels about us. But that probably wouldn't come across the way I'd mean it to.

"Can I watch her?" I said. Maybe it was a small branch I could offer. A reminder that'd been friends-all of us-for so many years before this. "I mean, it's not like I have anything to do."

"I couldn't ask you to do that," Ethan said.

"You're not—I'm volunteering. Anyway, if it'll help you—then I want to do it."

"Are you really up for watching a one year old?" Ethan said, but I could already see the relief on his face.

"Yeah? I mean, why not?" The truth was that it would be a hell of a distraction from the thoughts about the band. I wasn't exactly jumping at the opportunity to go back to my hotel room alone to dwell on them without interruption.

"Thank you," Ethan said, sitting up on his elbows and glancing at the clock. "Shit I really do need to get ready."

I nodded and laid back in the bed.

**xxx.**

"I really really appreciate you doing this," Ethan said, hovering in the doorway. I wrapped my arms around myself as the cold air pushed past him. "I have sweaters in the top drawer of my dresser," he said, eyeing the t-shirt of his that I'd already put on. "Just not the striped one—I don't want baby puke on it."

"You didn't tell me that the baby might puke on me in that thirty minute lecture of where every baby accessory in the house is located."

"She probably won't. Remember: Food. Play. Sleep."

I nodded and looked back at the list of emergency phone numbers listed on the fridge. He grabbed my arm and I turned back to look at him.

"When I get back tonight we can talk about things. I didn't mean what I said before. It's just hard." he said, leaning down to pull me into a kiss before turning to go.

"Mrs. Biggle should be here any minute to drop off Dev," he called over his shoulder. "I'll be home at 9:30."

I waved from the door and before turning back to the empty house. I could tell that someone had worked hard to clean up from the party yesterday, but still the whole place felt barren. It was nothing like Ethan's old apartment-with reminders of him everywhere. I opened the fridge and stared at the leftover pieces of Georgie's birthday cake. I was considering ordering in Chinese when the I heard someone's key turning in the door.

"Can you grab her?" Henrietta yelled, kicking the door open as the toddler her in arms looked alarmed.

I rushed over and pulled the baby from her. She sighed and turned back to grab a diaper bag and her purse off the front porch. The baby twisted in my arms looking around-probably for Ethan. My heart leapt a bit at her presence and I wanted to explain that I was just here to babysit last minute.

"I'm here to-"

"Listen, Dylan," she said, setting her bags down on the coffee table. "I need to apologize about yesterday. I mean, what was I thinking? You know? It was an accident. And it's just so great to have you here. To have you meet my daughter." The enthusiasm in her voice didn't quite come across in her expression and I felt uneasy.

I followed her lead and sat down on the sofa, and unzipped the baby's coat and laid it over the back of the sofa.

"Yeah, of course. Well, I did show up unexpectedly."

"Nonsense, you're my best friend. You're welcome here anytime." Her eyes were wide dark circles in pale skin and I blinked and looked down at her spiked boots encrusted with melting muddy snow. There was something flat in her tone—but then again, I had been away for awhile. Maybe I wasn't remembering Henrietta's personality correctly—or maybe her personality had changed.

"I'm really glad you said that," I said. "I mean, I've really missed all of you."

But she must not have heard me at all, because she narrowed her eyes and continued as if I'd never spoke. "Here—I think Devvy wants her Mommy," she said, reaching for the squirming toddler who didn't look any more content in her lap than in mine. "And I'm sorry that Ethan made you stay here to babysit. I think he got the schedule mixed up again. I was supposed to go into work tonight. But they decided to cut my shift."She sunk back into the couch with a sigh and picked at her fingernail polish.

"Where are you working?"

"Just at the Cost Cutters in the mall as the receptionist. I was supposed to start beauty school when I found out I was pregnant with her. So until classes start back up in the spring, I'm just setting appointments."

"That's cool," I said. I couldn't exactly imagine her sweeping up hair all day, but then again, I couldn't exactly imagine her having a baby.

"Things have just been so hard," she said, turning to me now with her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. "With Dev and everyone cutting my shifts at work. "I mean, I can't even buy groceries for us. Georgie brings over leftover food from Benny's some nights. So we have that." She hugged the baby closer and looked up at me.

"Well, Jesus—I can give you money for groceries." I was already digging my wallet out of my jeans. It was really the only thing I was good for.

"Oh—no, Dylan—we'll get by. We've made it three years without any help from you."

"No, Henri, how much do you need, I'm serious." I fished out a couple fifties and a twenty and passed it to her in a wad.

"Really you didn't have to do that," she said as she pushed Dev off to the side to count the bills.

"It's not a problem, really." I helped steady Dev as she crawled near the the edge of the couch.

"Well, listen how about I go shopping for some essentials to restock the cabinets and when I get back I'll make you two dinner?"

"Yeah that sounds great," I said. "Are you sure you don't want us to come with you?"

"No, she's been running around with me all day—she'll probably need a nap soon."

"OKay," I said watching the little girl trying to push herself to her feet on the cushion.

"Great. Give Mommy a kiss goodbye." she kissed her fingers and pressed them to Dev's head as she stood up.

I stood up and followed her to the door, looking outside to see Damien parked on the street, obviously waiting for her. As soon as she shut the front door, he flicked his cigarette out the window. Even from here I could see her waving the cash as they drove off. I turned and looked back at Dev who didn't seem surprised by this development. And the sinking feeling I'd that had been growing beneath my feet from the moment my plane landed expanded. I played the conversation over in my mind, something just didn't feel right. Like Henrietta wasn't altogether there—like she wasn't really seeing me, or trying hard not to. I couldn't imagine Damien would be that delighted about speeding off to buy diapers and baby formula.

"Hey Dev," I said, reaching to the table to hand her the plush unicorn that Ethan had told me she liked. But she wouldn't take it from me, and I had to sit it on the sofa between us. A sense of uneasiness fell over the entire house and I tried to ignore it. Maybe it was the way Dev kept looking at the door, how Henrietta had been so quick to leave, or the pleased look on Damien's face as she slid into the passenger seat waving the money. There was a wrongness to it all. I pulled the cuffs of Ethan's sweater over my fingers. I just wanted him to come home and lie to me and tell me how fine they all were without me. The truth was that I didn't really understand everyone's lives here now. 

This time last week I'd been doing a radio interview with Mike and wondering how many more questions until we could go back to the hotel. But now that life seemed like it was just the plot of a bad made-for-tv movie that I might pass as I flicked through the channels on Henrietta's TV.


	4. Chapter 4

_“We were a goldmine, they gutted us.”  
_ -Bright Eyes, Gold Mine Gutted

**x.**

I was sitting on window ledge in Ethan’s room, watching the blue light of the TV shine through the neighbor’s window across the street. Each major station no doubt airing some asinine show -- filling everyone’s heads with something to talk about the next day. But it was hard to get too bitter thinking about that when there were Christmas lights wrapped around front doors and lamp-posts up and down the street.

I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if across town, the white lights that my mom bought because she thought they looked “classy” were lit. Back when it was just us, she used to have me help her secure them over the tops of the windows out front so our neighbors wouldn’t think less of us for not decorating. When she met my step-dad he’d been too concerned with running up the electric bill to allow her to put them up. The thought of him pulled me away from the world outside and into my memories of my old bedroom. Listening hard to hear if I could hear him snoring between commercials spilling from the TV. Listening hard to hear if it was okay for me to make noise. 

I hopped down off the window ledge and turned my attention back to the sleeping infant, her eyelashes casting long shadows down her cheeks. She’d been asleep for an hour now -- she’d pretty much gone right to sleep after I fed her the jar of mushy peas and carrots Ethan had pointed out before he’d left. Henrietta had never come back with dinner for us. I wanted to be surprised. I wanted to believe that I didn't know why. 

My manager had called earlier, begging me to convince Mike to stick around. So I guess the word was out. I told him that Mike's mind was made up. I wasn’t going to talk anyone into anything ever again. I'd made it this long without being able to count on anyone, there's no reason to think that life couldn't keep going on that way forever. 

I’d half-listened as my manager described how the label could hold Mike hostage to the contract and force him to produce another album. His arrogant tone reminded me of a label representative I’d met in a club years ago who had tried to exchange interest in my musical career for a sexual favor. Everything just repeated in the end. I thought of Ethan waiting for me at an icy bus-top in the middle of the night, waiting to take me into his arms. Was he still that person now, and would I even want him to be?

Still, how had I missed all the signs that they’d been in love all those months? How had I completely dismissed Mike’s obvious change in behavior -- always bleary-eyed in the hotel lobby every morning like he hadn’t slept at all. Sometimes I wondered if I could feel anything other than the blind desperation that got me everything that I have now. I couldn’t count how many times I’d sworn to myself that I wasn’t still in love with Ethan -- from lonely cafes in England to humid nights outside packed stadiums on the east coast. I thought I was empty, I thought I was broken, but one glance of him again in Benny’s yesterday undid everything. And for what?

I still had an hour until he came home, I tried not to think about what that would mean. Was what had happened earlier just a fluke? Would he spend his shift at work picking it apart? Wondering what he might be thinking was easier than feeling anything myself.

I jumped up when I heard the front door open.

“Henri?” Georgie called, he was clutching a plastic bag with his gloved hands.

He offered me a half-smile when he saw me appear at the end of the hallway.

“Hey Dylan,” he said, sitting the bag down on the counter. A beanie was pulled down over his forehead, making his longer hair stick out along his red cheeks. I could see the collar of his black work polo shirt under his coat.

“Where is everyone?”

“Dev is sleeping and Ethan’s at work.”

“Oh,” he said, stuffing a couple styrofoam to-go containers into the fridge and leaving two half-full packs of bagels on the counter. “So you’re babysitting?”

"I guess so. Henrietta was here -- but she kind of took off."

“Coffee?” He asked, filling the Mr. Coffee with tap water.

I leaned my elbows on the counter. I wondered what he thought of all of this. The baby, Henrietta’s disappearing act, Ethan’s role as Mr. Mom. I was trying to think of the best way to ask, when the front door clicked open again. Henrietta slowly and soundlessly shut it behind her, keeping her head down as she made a direct path towards her room. She hadn’t even paused to take off her coat, which was covered in melting snowflakes. Had she changed her mind about being okay that I was here with Dev, or here at all

“Hey,” I said--and when she didn’t turn to acknowledge me I said her name.

She offered a sarcastic half wave and kept walking.

“Where are the groceries?” I followed her down the hallway, resisting the urge to cross my arms across my chest.

“What?”

“The groceries I gave you money for?”

 _“Oh, God,_ Dylan, there’s more important shit going on right now.” She grabbed a section of her hair and started running her fingers over the ends. I thought maybe she was talking about Dev or the fact that her hours had been cut at work again.

I turned to shoot Georgie a look, but he had busied himself scooping coffee into the filter.

“What’s the matter?” I walked closer to her, wondering if I’d be hit by the smell of pot or vodka--something to explain why her eyes were drooping shut.

She just snorted and continued down the hallway. 

I followed after her, gingerly stepping over piles of dirty clothes on my way into her bedroom. “What's going on?" 

She had her phone pressed to her ear as she sat on the edge of her bed ignoring me. “ _Answer your phone you piece of shit_ ,” she muttered, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. 

She kicked off her boots and laid back on her unmade bed, stabbing out a text message before throwing her phone on the floor. She started chewing on her thumbnail before her eyes slid closed. 

“Henrietta!” I said, grabbing her shoulder. Her eyes focused on me like she was seeing me for the first time.

“What?”

“What did you take tonight?”

“Damien,” she said finally looking back at her phone. “He’s with someone else. He took what we bought and went to see her.”

“Henrietta, God-- what’s going on? What did you buy, what are you on right now?”

But now that she was staring at me so close up, I didn’t need her to say it--her pupils were pinholes. You weren’t in the music industry for more than a month without seeing someone taking heroin backstage at a festival. Even then, it hardly seemed glamorous. In a small red-neck town like this, it was a jail sentence or a deathwish.

“I don’t want to tell you,” she said, “you’ll think I’m a loser.” She pulled away from me and buried her head in a ball of her sheets. I placed my hand softly on her back -- afraid she’d shake me off. She turned her head -- her face wet and red, her eye lashes clumped together in sticky mascara. “I feel so lost Dylan, why did you have to come back now?”

For the first time since I’d been back I felt like I was talking to the real Henrietta. I wanted to tell her everything that she always meant to me, no matter how much it didn’t seem that way. But nothing I could say would be good enough, so all I managed to get out was a quiet, “It’s going to be okay.”

She turned her head and stared at where my hand was pressed flat against the bed.“Isn’t this Ethan’s?” she pinched the fabric that bunched at my wrists. I hesitated for a moment and she shook her head. “God, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“It’s just--”

“No, I’m not surprised. It’s you and Ethan. It’s always been you and Ethan. Even the distance and silence was just some sort of strange fucked up love between you two. You wouldn’t even be in this house right now if Ethan wasn’t going to grace us with his presence soon.”

Her words were sliding together and her eyes were closed now. I tried, to really believe that what she said was just drug-addled nonsense. I stared down at her and pulled one of the covers that had fallen off the bed over her. I couldn’t sit here dissecting the statement while there were actual problems -- a big neon sign problem-- filling up the room. I quietly stood up and headed to the hallway. I paused for a second and tugged the striped shirt over my head and tossed it across Ethan’s tangled sheets, sparing a look at the sleeping toddler in the crib before heading back out to the kitchen. It didn’t take a lot of common sense to see that this wasn’t an environment for a toddler -- how often was this the case? How had Ethan and Georgie not noticed what was going on?

Georgie was searching for creamer in the fridge and didn’t seem to want to acknowledge my presence. I didn’t know how to broach the subject, so the direct approach seemed the only practical way.

“Henrietta’s high right now, I think it’s herion but I’m not really sure.”

“Yeah,” Georgie said, sitting the creamer on the counter and staring at the floor.

“Yeah?” I said, my tone incredulous. “Yeah?”

“I mean--I know. He shrugged and took a sip of coffee like maybe I’d let the topic drop but his shoulders bunched together defensively.

“Have you told Ethan?”

“He already knows?”

“What does that mean? Does he or doesn’t he?”

“We just don’t talk about it.” Georgie looked down the hallway and then back at the floor. “I mean, what is there to say? Obviously we all know it’s not good. But we look out after her. That’s why I’m always over here.”

“So you’re looking out for her-- by dropping off half-expired packs of bagels from Benny’s?

“Jesus, Dylan I don’t know--keep your voice down--she could hear you." He was biting down on his lip-ring, making the left corner of his lip skew at an unnatural angle.

“I’m so sorry if she hears that I’m _opposed_ to her being a drug addict.” I sighed and pushed my bangs out of my face. "And that I just think it's fucked up that there's a baby living around all of this."

"Twenty-four hours ago you didn't even know Dev existed." Georgie said, as if it would completely shut down the conversation.

"And you did. So what were you doing about it?"

“She’s an adult. I can’t control what she does. Just like I can’t control what you did.”

I leaned back in disbelief, my face tight. I was completely unwilling to let this be turned around on me.

“What?”

Georgie shrugged and looked hard at the empty plastic bag he’d left on the counter.

“You left. Got a duffle bag of your stuff together one night and boarded a plane and expected us all to be happy for you.”

"Like hell -- I knew better than to expect that from any of you."

"At least we didn’t abandon each other.”

"This time," I said. I didn't realize I still felt this way. 

“This is about how you don’t have a say anymore!” Georgie was yelling -- I don’t know if I can ever remember a time Georgie had yelled at me. But it didn’t matter right now.  

“Like hell, I’m going to go over to the Biggle’s house right now. That’s who is bankrolling the rent here right? There’s no way that Mrs. Biggle would be okay with her daughter high on heroin with her granddaughter asleep in the room next door.”

Georgie slammed his mug on the counter hard and the coffee spilled over the sides over his hand. “Absolutely not!”

“Stay here with the baby.” I grabbed my jacket off the back of the kitchen chair. I didn’t care if I had to walk ten blocks in the snow, this was going to end tonight.

“Dylan -- please, listen to me, just -- listen to me.” Georgie seemed to realize that he was practically shouting mid-sentence and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “You never think anything through -- don’t you realize by now that’s how you keep fucking everything up?!”

I felt so overwhelmed and so rattled by everything that my hand was shaking as I tried to do up the buttons of my jacket. There was just no air in the room, there was just no sense in anything. Georgie wasn’t supposed to be calling me a fuck-up with hurt blue eyes, Henrietta wasn’t supposed to be high alone in her room, and Ethan wasn’t supposed to be sweeping everyone’s problems under the rug to savage everyone’s life but his own. If I could just fix one thing -- if I could just fix this thing tonight --

The door opened and Ethan was shaking snow off his shoulders in the doorway. Georgie turned his back and swiped at his eyes with the back of his hands. “Don’t,” he whispered harshly so only I would hear.

“Hey,” Ethan said. “What’s going on? Where are you going?” He glanced at me and then to Georgie’s turned back. I quickly glanced down at the criss-crossed laces on my boots, trying to ease the strained look on my face.

“I was just dropping off some food,” Georgie said, “and Dylan was about to step out for a smoke.”

I wanted to contradict him but it actually sounded like a damn fine idea, and suddenly I was happy he’d turned into such an opportunistic liar. I patted my jacket pocket for my cigarettes and headed towards the door after shooting a tight smile at Ethan. He looked like he was about to follow me but Georgie asked some question about Dev and I shut the door soundlessly.

I kicked some snow off the small porch and leaned under the awning as I light my cigarette. My heart my pounding under my stupid jacket and I thought of all those Edgar Allen Poe stories we used to pass around to read in study hall. Loud pounding hearts under floorboards -- mad narrators haunted by something only they could hear. I wanted to focus on anything other than what was on the other side of the wall behind me for one solid second so I could shake this feeling -- this claustrophobic feeling of ruin.

My cellphone was vibrating in my pocket and I stared down at Mike’s number. “Hey,” I said, taking a drag of my cigarette. I pulled the hood of my coat over my head and sat on the frozen ground where I’d kicked away the snow.

“Hey Dylan -- I just wanted I to check in. Everything happened so fast this morning.”

“It’s fine, really.” My breaths were clouds of smoke in the night. I imagined them floating above South Park and becoming the snow that was blanketing everything.

“You don’t sound fine. Has management been calling you?”

I hated that the only alternative to the completely overwhelming situation behind me was an equally overwhelming situation involving my music career. Somehow though, this seemed easier.

“They have. But that’s their job, you know?” I felt good, showing someone that I was a reasonable person.

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced.

Through the window I could see Georgie and Ethan talking in the kitchen. There was nothing about their body language to indicate that anything ground-breaking was taking place. I shivered under my jacket and wondered how long I could stretch this cigarette break. How much time I could buy to put my thoughts together. Isn’t that what Georgie wanted -- for me to think things through?

“Listen, I guess I called because I just wanted to make sure you were okay, per say, after seeing Ethan this morning.”

“Mike, stop being weird.” I’d gone years without having an emotional conversation with Mike, I wasn’t going to start now.

“No, I mean -- I know things are strained between you and your friends. But I thought you should know that the last time we toured in Austin I ran into Ethan outside the venue. He didn’t want you to know that he was there. I didn’t tell you at the time because I thought it might throw you off, knowing he was there. But it was selfish, and anyway--now you know.”

I tried to imagine Ethan slinking into the back of the club, standing by the wall as fans reached up towards me and Mike, screaming his terrible lyrics back at us. I wished knowing it now meant I could change the moment -- meant I could confront him then -- ask him why he felt so comfortable buying a ticket to see me but unable to pick up the phone to call me. But the anger faded before it’d ever really formed and all I felt was regret for something that never happened.

I thought of the copy of AP Magazine that I’d found earlier tucked under a stack of unopened bills on Ethan’s desk. My face stared back up at me from the front cover through eyes thickly coated with eyeliner. Mike was standing in the foreground, as I looked over his shoulder, the guitar that was strapped across my body wasn’t even mine. They’d given me a red Fender to match the color scheme of the shoot.I remember how the hot lights had started to melt the foundation they’d caked on my face over old acne scars.

“Okay, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s just -- you never know what’s going to matter, you know?”

“I guess not,” I said, finally stubbing out the cigarette under my boot. A silver SUV pulled up into the driveway, the snow falling hard in the gaze of its headlights. Even before it had come to a complete stop I recognized Henrietta’s parents.

“Listen, I gotta go, I’ll talk to you later man.” I was sure I was cutting him off, but I hadn’t heard anything he’d just said anyway. I slid my phone back in my pocket as I tore open the front door.

“Henrietta’s parents are here -- and I didn’t call them!” I said, moving as far as I could away from the door. Ethan shot me a confused look and Georgie shot up, his eyes wide.

“The fuck you did Dylan!” he was stabbing his finger in the air as I shook my head vehemently.

“Georgie, I swear --”

“You don’t care what you fuck up because you don’t stick around for the fallout from it!”

I felt a wave of lightheadedness crash over me, everything was happening too fast.

“Georgie, calm down! Jesus!” Ethan clamped his hand on Georgie’s shoulder. They were both staring at me: Georgie shooting daggers and Ethan somewhere between confusion and concern. The front door was going to open any second and I felt like I’d betrayed Henrietta on the basis of Georgie’s anger alone. It’s not that I didn’t think her parents needed to know, but not like this -- not high as shit, stretched across her unmade bed.

“Just _leave_ Dylan!”

I took a step backwards like maybe I was going to. I wasn’t -- I just thought it might make him feel better. I felt like my whole existence was one long charade where I tried to do what was right without upsetting anyone. And only in this moment did I realize that it was impossible.

“What the hell is going on?” Ethan demanded, struggling to catch up.

Henrietta was standing at the edge of the hall behind both of them with her phone clutched in her hand. Her face was red and puffy. “Leave him alone Georgie, I called them okay?”

“But Henri--”

“No, I’m fucking sick of myself. I don’t need any of your help,” she turned and looked at me, “or any of your stupid fucking money. Okay? I just want to feel like myself again. I don’t want to hear you and Dylan fighting over me like I’m some big fucking problem. So I’m leaving. And my parents can take care of Dev for awhile.”

“No Henri, you’re not a problem --” I said.

But there wasn’t time for conversation, the door opened and Henrietta’s parents reluctantly shuffled in, dusting snow off of themselves by the doorway.

“Hello Mr. and Mrs. Biggle,” Ethan said cooly. Mrs. Biggle shot him a thin smile before asking Henrietta for duffle bags for Dev’s things. It was obvious from the mood that this wasn’t new information to them -- maybe something they’d suspected for a long time and not wanted to believe. Henrietta mumbled that she’d be in to help them pack as they solemnly went into her room. She poured a cup of coffee with shaky hands, and shot us all a look, as if daring us to try and talk her out of anything.

“I think we should leave for a bit,” Ethan said, as we watched Mr. Biggle carry two large duffle bags out the front door. From the bedroom, Dev was starting to cry and Mrs. Biggle rushed to the kitchen and told Henrietta to help her prepare a bottle.

“See you later Henri,” Georgie mumbled. I tried to shoot her a smile, but she wouldn’t turn away from the microwave counting down the seconds until the bottle would be done.

The three of us slunk outside without another word. “I’m going over to Ike’s,” Georgie announced, brushing by us to his car. I thought Ethan would try and stop him but he didn’t.

We both climbed into his Jetta like we’d done one thousand times before and waited for the heat to actually kick in.

“Where should we go?” He asked while digging around in the backseat.

“My hotel?”

He turned back around and sat a thick striped scarf on my lap. Only when I went to wrap it around my neck did I realize that my hands had been shaking from the cold. We made our way slowly down the snow blanketed street and I pulled the scarf over my chin, trying not to obsess over how much it smelled like him.

“I can’t even believe that she got high tonight,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Where did she even get the money?”

I watched the houses pass by the window and told the truth before I stopped myself. “I gave it to her--for groceries--I didn’t know,” I said, my voice raised at the end. I was prepared for him to be upset at me about it.

“It’s not your fault,” he said softly. I wanted to make myself believe it, and tried to pretend for a moment that I did.

When we got to the hotel the front desk attendant looked surprised to see me -- I guess I had been gone for a day. I passed her without a word though -- sure that she was about to barrage me with messages from my manager. I unlocked the door to my room and slunk inside. The bed had been made and the empty snack wrappers and pilot sized bottles of vodka had been thrown away. He sat down on the edge of bed and I joined him.

“I didn’t know they had hotels this nice around here,” he said, nodding to the flat-screen TV across from him. I could have pointed out that this was the most dismal room I’d stayed in for ages, and not just because the skyline consisted of the Walmart shopping center sign and telephone poles.

He crossed his long legs and closed his eyes -- before pressing his thumb to his temple. “Tonight was a shitshow, ” he glanced at me. “Sorry that you had to be there for that. But you know, I’m not sorry about what happened the rest of the day.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey,” he said, tugging his scarf loose from my neck. Heat crept up my neck when his lips pressed against my throat.

“I should have never left you guys.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud. But the sentiment had been so loud in my brain that it just slipped out.

“Don’t say that.”

From the window I watched the snow swirling in the lampposts in the parking lot below. I ran my finger over the frozen glass, leaving behind a melting line in the condensation. “I could have stayed -- re-recorded the demo, or just sent it to more labels--played more shows outside the area. If the Bellandonnas had made it --”

“And maybe we wouldn’t have, maybe we’d still be in South Park together, only you’d be shift leader at Starbucks instead of the guitarist in a famous band that has toured Europe and made fucking music videos.”

“We’re not exactly famous,” I mumbled.

He raised his eyebrows and looked away. “God, Dylan -- don’t you realize what you’ve accomplished. Don’t you realize that you did it -- you got out? You’re living our dream, and I’m so fucking proud of you.”

“This wasn’t the dream!” I kneeled on the floor in front of him and grabbed his hands in mine. “We were, the Belladonnas were!”

“It was just something,” he took a long breath and looked somewhere behind me, “the band was just something the rest of us did to have an excuse to hang out.”

“Bullshit,” I said, “God Ethan--how can you say that to me!?”

His head was bent down now, his curls brushing the edges of his cheeks. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I don’t know anymore.”

“We can be a band again, you and me -- we can be the Belladonnas.”

“Dylan...”

“I’m serious.”

“Can we just not talk about this anymore tonight?” his fingers were dragging a cluster of curls down towards his chin then letting them go. Did he think I was the same high school slacker with pipe-dreams that used to say stuff like this from the floor of my bedroom? Or did he just genuinely hate the thought of us together in any capacity but the occasional fuck?  

He looked so fragile and pensive that my heart broke and I didn’t care what his reason was. I tucked his curls behind his ear and kissed his temple. “Yeah, I’m sorry -- we can talk about whatever you want.”

He shot me an uncertain glance -- like it was some ruse to keep the line of conversation open. Instead I leaned my head back against the wall as he laid back on the uncomfortable hotel bed.

“It’s weird to think about you in all these empty hotel rooms,” he mumbled, shifting in bed, his cheek pressed to the comforter as he looked down at me.  “Come up here.”

When I sat on the bed, his fingers circled my wrist and pulled me towards him. For the first time since he’d left me alone in his bed earlier today I felt warm again. I wanted to get used to the feeling again -- to tell myself that life could be like this again.

“I’ve been fine,” I said. For some reason it made him pull me closer -- I could feel his heartbeat against my chest.

“I know you have,” he said, his fingers brushing my bangs away from my eyes. It was a gesture that took me back four years ago -- when it really was me and Ethan -- when things really were fine.

When I fell asleep I dreamt that I was alone -- in a generic hotel room -- with white walls and windows that overlooked unfamiliar buildings. Every half hour I’d wake up and remember that I was here with him, the warmth of his body pressed against mine. It was opposite of dreaming and I kept pressing my fingernails into my palm to stay awake.


End file.
